A 38-year marriage doesn’t happen by accident
My husband Greg and I just celebrated our 38th wedding anniversary. We were married in the mid-1980s and our wardrobe choices (and my hair!) clearly show we were influenced by the trends of the era. Giant leg-of-mutton sleeves on my dress, with a long, “Princess Diana” train and a collar that stood up to my ears, and a white tux with tails for Greg — we were the bomb.
We were also pretty starry-eyed about what marriage meant, and how “easy” life would be. I mean, I was 21, he was 24 and we had life figured out.
Hahaha. We had no idea what we were getting into. And, let’s be honest — that’s probably a good thing.
We had no idea when we got married that we would end up becoming parents to children with disabilities, or that our family would be huge, or that we would bury several children, or even that we would live in Utah County for basically our whole married life and the same house for more than 20 years. For two people who moved around a lot while we were growing, that was unexpected.
Our family, as I’ve written about before, grew to include 20 children by adoption, four by birth and one awesome granddaughter for whom we are her permanent legal guardians. We’re often asked, “Did you plan this?!” I always laugh and say “Who plans this?!” I mean, seriously ...
We “planned” on having six healthy kids, all born to us. With child No. 2, we found out God had other plans, and our daughter Elizabeth was born to us with significant disabilities. I remember people telling us at the time that we must be special parents for God to send us such a special child. I literally wailed, “I don’t want to be special. I just want to be normal!”
Clearly, I got over that. No one has “accused” me of being normal for a long time.
Another thing I heard a lot was often in the form of a question: “How did you convince your husband to let you adopt so many children?” Let’s be clear. You cannot “accidentally” adopt. We did not move forward adding to our family until we were both on board completely.
We also parented with a united front. Some of our children came to us with significant attachment issues, and sometimes our children loved to engage in triangulation by trying to play one parent off the other. We learned quickly to present a united front — and we wised up to kids who heard “no” from one parent and then tried to get the other one to say yes.
We have each other’s back in non-parenting scenarios, too. My husband, Greg, is my biggest cheerleader. From helping me have “me” time when I was deep in the trenches of mothering, to running for political office, to cheering me on when I decided at age 49 that it was time I finished a bachelor’s degree, he’s been supportive — and not just in words. He cooks, cleans, parents and does grocery shopping when I can’t. He’s the reason I pursued a Ph.D. I didn’t think I was smart enough, but he insisted I could do it. Turns out, he was right. Now, I’m even thinking about a second one.
We have deliberately and consciously worked on staying together. We still go on dates. We still work at becoming better at communicating. We work on home renovation projects together and we love to travel together as often as we can. We also have things we do separately — he loves puzzles and I love lunch with girlfriends. Growing spiritually has also been important, both together and separately. We don’t keep score, either of hurts received or of chores completed. We give each other grace when we’re not our best selves.
Some years have been relatively easy. Some have been excruciatingly difficult. We’ve been to professional therapy to help us over some of the roughest patches. There are some annoying things we’ve decided are not worth divorcing over: giving each other driving directions, for example. Google Maps saved our marriage. Not even joking.
The late Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints President Gordon B. Hinckley, quoting the columnist Jenkin Lloyd Jones, reminded us that “Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he has been robbed. The fact is that most putts don’t drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to be just like people, (and) most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration.” We’ve learned to tolerate each other’s quirks and overlook annoying habits, while both of us still work on self-improvement. While we sometimes go to bed angry (sleep deprivation makes everything worse, I promise), we have never treated each other with contempt, which happens to be the No. 1 predictor of divorce.
After almost four decades, we are not together by accident or even by habit. We get to choose into our relationship, again and again and again. Our 38 years have meant lots of humor, shared stories (that we remember differently, haha), growth and tolerance. It has meant learning to live with each other’s quirks, learning how to disagree better, and even to argue better. It means that we have hurt and been hurt, but we’ve also forgiven and been forgiven.
It’s been a good run so far.
